Hey! Super cool entry! After my first death on the second floor and realizing that I could not proceed further, since I had no potions left and was to weak for the wolves. I started my second run using dying as a game mechanic. I would clear floor one but leave one enemy alive, thereby level up and buy a lot of potions. Then i would let the last enemy kill me and start over until i could not get more EXP to level up on this floor (I never reached the 3000EXP but i was close). Prepared like that I entered the 2nd floor with 40HP, 20 Mana, 18 mana pots and 2 health pots. This time I made it straight throzgh this level but sadly I did not reach the 3000 EXP since the second floor has a lower combined enemy/exp sum. So I bought more potions and went on to the 3rd floor where i defeated the boss ^^. It took be a hand full of deaths on the first floor to get to 2500 EXP and sum up 4 (or 5?) upgrades so I dealt 13 damage per hit and had 40HP in the end.
Overall a fun experience and lovely to look at!
What did I love:
- The art style, the gameplay (typing like in textorcist ^^),
- The bits of narration made me feel like I'm here on a purpose
- The variety of enemies was refreshing (my favorites are snakes and bats)
- The end boss (cool to have an end boss)
- Shopping and leveling up!! (Why do I keep slaying enemies? For Gold!! And EXP!! Muaharhar!!) It gives the fights another purpose, I love that
- The ambience/music and the minimap
What can be improved?
- Keeping EXP when going deeper down, so I could have gotten a level more ^^
- Fixing the potion shop on floor 3 (the last shop is not working - I wouldn't have needed it but suggesting the player, there is a shop and then it is not was a bit sad. Hovewer, I imagined this shop was long lost and dead on purpose ^^- Maybe you could use a model of a destroyed shop here and a short message. That would be a cool narrative level element.)
- Some end after defeating the boss (at least a black page saying THX and showing your name :) )
- Making the move buttons work ^^ (It was odd to have clickable move buttons that didn't do anything ^^)
Overall: A super cool entry and I played for about an hour. So really good work here. One or two things to polish after the jam, but in the current state a really fun experience!